And So It Came to Pass...
And So It Came To Pass That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. R.E.M. Oil and Energy The first oil well was drilled in 1859 and since that time demand has constantly met supply. There has never been a moment in human history where consumers were not eager to purchase and any amount of oil produced anywhere in the world. The moment that oil supply peaked and demand continued, we had a problem. Saudi Arabia was the last to peak, in 2017, but by then, Kuwait had peaked (2010), so too had the United Arab Emirates and Iraq (2009), Nigeria, Mexico (2007), Canada and Algeria (2006), and the rest of the world including the USA had already peaked by 2005. The world’s net peak production, in retrospect, was found to be 2007, a rather optimistic outcome, often attributed to a growing green-movement and green policy successes amongst many world governments. As Hubert had predicted, while oil prices continued to rise dramatically, especially in the twenty-teens, by 2017 it absolutely sky-rocketed. Between 2017 and 2018, the cost of one barrel of crude went from 120$ to over $800. At the time, the oil industries controlled one-sixth of the world’s economies. One quarter of the world’s shipping carried oil. After 2017, every year the world had to make due with 2-5% less oil then the year before. By 2058, the world’s oil had been depleted. The world never really recovered from the western world’s depression of the twenty-teens and by 2018, the depression was truly-world wide and none could imagine recovering without some new, ‘magic-bullet’ technology for energy production. As early as the 1980s governments and private corporations sought desperately to find alternative fuel sources and indeed many nations were forced more and more to adopt greener technologies but unfortunately, a growing population and climate change often made these difficult or when successful, such as the Spanish or north African solar energy fields of the twenty-twenties, simply inadequate to meet the ever-growing need. Coal continued to survive as a useable fuel source for some time and though the total mass remaining in the ground did not peak until late in the twenty-forties, the net energy required to recover the coal in comparison to the energy produced had already peak long ago in twenty-twelve. The last to peak was China who’s massive reserves still to this day, remain un-depleted, though the net energy ratio peaked in twenty-twenty-eight. Well before that the massive strains placed upon energy consumption by the super-hot Chinese economic engine had driven coal prices up one-hundred fold from its prices in the twenty-ten, resulting, in combination with depletion of other energy sources in a massive and irreversible ‘depression acceleration’ (they were already in constant depression since twenty-eighteen). The resulting energy crisis, by twenty-twenty eight, ended the industrialized lifestyle for 95% of Chinese and 98% of the remainder of far-east Asia. Natural gas continued to be used in north America for a relatively short time, its production in the USA already having peaked by 2009 and in Canada by 2019. Europe, via Russia, continued to have access until nearly 2049 but its peak had already passed in 2038. Natural gas had been increasingly hoarded by Russia, China and some parts of European elites (especially for the production of much-prized fertilizers) and by 2035 was so expensive as to be beyond the reach of most Europeans, Russians or Chinese. An ever declining number of elite private corporations, mostly Russian, as well as the Chinese government’s industrial machine depleted the last of the natural stocks by 2050. By then the majority of the population of these states had already reverted to ‘pre-industrial’ lifestyles. Nuclear power continued to gain favor but already by 2005 the world had reached it peak production of uranium. For decades uranium continued to be a very small proportional cost of energy production from nuclear power plants and even dozen-fold increase in its price had very little change in the cost of energy production from nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 came at a bad time and greatly reduced public support of nuclear energy despite the obvious stains on fossil fuel and coal-based electricity production. Many governments were slow to move to nuclear and their economies reached ‘accelerated depression’ much earlier and among those were some who were completely unable to reverse the trend because nuclear power had already moved beyond their financial capacity to acquire. By twenty-thirty, as the world became more and more reliant on uranium-based energy, its price sky-rocketed and Australia and Canada, who had become the world’s only remaining producers of the metal after depletion of mines in the remaining parts of the world were under increasing pressure from the industrialized world to mine faster and bring more of the metal to market. Ultimately this acceleration led to depletion of all known sources of uranium much faster then originally anticipated and by 2042, there was no more uranium to be found. Non-uranium fuels, introduced as early as the twenty-teens extended the lifetime of the power plants and thorium-based atomic energy continues to power much of the world’s remaining heavy industry though the expense of its production makes it available only to a select few corporations and governments; the energy produced proved to be, counter to expectations from the twenty-teens not nearly as efficient as originally foreseen. None-the-less, along with solar and to a lesser extent wind and tidal power, thorium-based energy remains the source of modern energy, at least amongst the elite. One of the last sources of useable energy was the massive oil-sands deposits of Alberta, Canada and the Orinico belt of Venezuela as well as additional fields identified in Siberia only as late as 2021. Unfortunately, the extraction of energy from oil sands was itself a very energy-dependent process and additionally caused massive damage to local fresh-water ecosystems and released massive amounts of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, further accelerating the world’s rate of climate change. This last source of energy peaked in 2038, and was able to keep the Canadian, Russian and American (who had seized Venezuela) economies ticking along without the complete collapses such as those seen in China, the middle-east or Europe until then. In 2039, a new wave of ‘depression acceleration’ brought the ‘industrialized lifestyle’ to a near-complete halt except for the very privileged few. By 2047 the oil sands were depleted. The last source of natural gas, methane hydrates from the floor of the Arctic Ocean, proved extremely expensive to recover, even with the massive melt of polar ice, and beyond the means of the majority of the world’s remaining economies. None-the-less, two of the more energy-endowed nations, Canada and Russia, raced to develop these last precious resources and in 2039 fought a limited war over their possession with neither side coming out the obvious victor and an uneasy treaty resulting in the division of the world’s last energy reserves in Canada’s slight favor. While the energy produced was significant, in the short term, for some remaining elite Canadian and Russian corporations (though not the general public), the burning of methane was as bad or worse for the environment as the extraction of oil-sands had been. Paradoxically, rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures resulted in the release of more methane gas from the polar ocean floor in a positive feedback cycle that, though having peaked in 2071, continued until 2078 when it abruptly ceased and the last of the mega corporations and their walled enclaves of ‘industrialized lifestyles’-enabled populations joined the rest of humanity. No new non-renewable sources of energy were to be developed and the world was completely dependent on increasingly insufficient wind, hydro, tidal and solar farms as well as those thorium-based atomic energy plants governments and corporations were able to build prior to the almost total collapse of their economies. Already the massive deforestations of the twenty-fifties and sixties were forever changing the face of the earth. By the late twenty-thirties, the majority of electricity available to the world’s general populations was derived from hydroelectric, wind or solar plants. In some nations that governments wisely invested their remaining energy from fossil and non-renewable sources in the extraction of the aluminum and silicon needed for their construction and there are more useable plants. Later thorium power would emerge amongst the richest nations. For many, especially among what was once called developing nations, or nations where money for these projects was diverted by corruption or war, there is no electricity whatsoever. For the lucky, despite these sources, for nearly two decades they had been suffering from recurrent large-scale brown outs, then days without power, then finally the total shutdown of the electric grid. There was much interest in building public and private renewable energy systems, but by then it was near-impossible to find the money. People spoke sorrowfully of the selfishness and shortsightedness of previous generations who neglected to use part of their energy wealth to bequeath renewable energy systems to their descendants. By twenty-forty, with the exception of Canada and Russia, energy from even the renewable sources is so expensive and so precious that only the centralized governments or mega-corporations of the world possess access to the electricity produced. By twenty-fifty, the populations Canada and Russia had joined the rest of the world. Agriculture “...and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” Revelations 6: 5-6 The ‘green revolution’ of the 1960’s, the arrival of artificial fertilizers, motorized farm equipment and petro-derived herbicides and pesticides changed agriculture forever. Before then, some 100 genera of microscopic life annually unlocked the elements of the last generation of plants to make food for the next one. Artificial fertilizers killed those microbiotics but provided the necessary nutrition and so it didn’t matter. In two-thousand, 85 million tons of fertilizers were spread on the world’s fields every year. This fertilizer was manufactured from five-hundred million barrels of crude oil. For very kilocalorie of food produced, ten kilocalories of petro-energy were used to manufacture it. Add transport energy costs and the picture was very grim indeed… and certainly not sustainable. Fertilizers, motorized farming and chemicals meant that food production continued to keep pace with the growing world populations well beyond the ‘natural’ capacity of the earth to support them. International development agencies helped spread the ‘green revolution’ to ‘developing nations’ and the cycle expanded… dangerously. By twenty-ten, nearly 10-15% of all fossil fuels, especially natural gas, are consumed in the production of artificial fertilizer, and as the loss of cheap natural gas progresses, artificial fertilizer manufacturing in all but a few locations shuts down, the majority of farmers completely unable to afford their use. The same is true of herbicides and pesticides. But soon fuel shortages mean use of motorized farming equipment is no longer available. The megalithic agricultural corporations from the twenty hundreds and twenty-teens are falling apart and increasingly farming is performed by independent small-scale families and communes who are desperate to switch from massive, large-scale seasonal mono-cropping to growing a mixed crop of organic product. The thousands of years of a human agriculture that developed over 497 varieties of lettuce and 307 of sweet corn, due to ‘modern’ farming practices has reduced these numbers to 36 and 12 respectively. The same is true of every other human and livestock crop. And while these last few varieties had been stowed away in the food crop vault in Norway prior to their extinction, there is precious few varieties that remain that are naturally suited for the millions of microclimates across the globe no longer able to rely upon chemical assistance. Meat and egg producers are switching from electricity and grain-dependent factory farms to pre-industrial pasture based herding. Automated watering systems and the network of food distribution collapses. Increasingly labor is provided by draft animals where available and human labor where it isn’t. Productivity, despite man-kind’s best efforts, drops dramatically, accelerated by the droughts and extreme weather phenomena of out-of-control climate change. Indeed, the effects of climate change greatly complicated re-establishment of an organic agricultural base as few species were adapted to such extreme weather conditions. For most in North America and Europe, farming has been ‘someone else’s’ job for several generations and there is little tradition of food production without industrial assistance. By twenty-twenty Americans and many in the Middle-East are getting leaner and leaner and already suffering from periodic, extended, food shortages. ‘Fast-food’, as most chain-restaurants have all but disappeared. In Asia and Latin America, where traditional organic food-farming was much more common only a generation ago, the change is not so abrupt as many return to their grand-parents professions. None-the-less, highly expanded populations mean domestic squabbling over land and the formation of petty warlords throughout these areas. In present times, most people grew food in a way very similar to their ancestors of the middle ages, on small homesteads on small private lands though they make use of a much wider variety of crops and animals that had been traded from all over the world in better times. Runaway Climate Change and Extreme Weather Since twenty-ten the average planetary temperature has risen 8.7˚C. Sea levels have risen 14m. Many had predicted such changes in 2010 but most futurologist would have called them pessimists. While many had understood the potential for what was known as ‘Runaway Climate Change’, none could foresee the numerous overlapping factors that would give rise to the phenomenon. Obviously the single greatest source of climate change was the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Later increasingly desperate governments and corporations sought energy, any energy for consumption without concern for the long or short-term effects upon climate, the use of the oil sands energy by Canada, the former USA and Russia as well as the use of methane hydrates from the polar ocean floor all being excellent examples thereof. Rising temperatures also led to the thawing of the permafrost in Sibera, northern Canada and Alaska, which in turned inverted their function from net carbon sinks to carbon emitters and caused the release of approximately 90 gigatons of methane and 40 gigatons of methane clathrates from tundra areas. These gases had effects up to ten times that of a similar mass of carbon-dioxide and once this process, along with the reduced buffering of the world’s oceans due to increased temperatures and the massive deforestations undertaken by much of the world’s population in the twenty-fifties and sixties desperate for energy began, a very rapid and obviously irreversible trend in accelerated climate change began. This was known as ‘Run-Away Climate Change’ and, together with the energy shortages of the century, was directly responsible for most of the economic and human suffering we have observed. Rising temperatures ultimately led to an inversion of many of the world’s ocean currents, ultimately leading to the ‘great freeze’ that currently grips the British isles, much of Scandinavia, and the north coasts of France, and the extreme weather phenomena including hurricanes, cyclones and frequent tornadoes that continually harass much of the world’s population. Rising waters causes the seas to overwhelm the levees of the Netherlands first in 2019 and periodically afterwards despite the nation’s best interest and by 2028 the Hague is no longer habitable. Run-away climate change has sunk innumerable small islands, including the entirety of the Malidves, and amongst other major cities, London, Karachi, Rio de Janeiro, Adelaide, and New Orleans. ‘Run-Away Climate Change’ has also led to massive droughts, especially in western North America, north-eastern Brazil, the Mediterranean basin, Iberia, Southern Africa, and Oceana, often due to reduced mountain glacier spring run-off but just as often not. Drought in these areas has also, in turn, led to greatly reduced agricultural productivity and frequent wild-fires brought on by ever-increasingly numerous lightning storms. Drought in combination with more severe weather and generally much windier conditions leads to rapid soil erosion especially in the southern and mid-western portions of the USA and northern Mexico. High altitude areas retain less ice and as a consequence many delta regions have suffered due to reduced river flow and rising sea levels Indeed one-sixth of the world’s population, in 2010 was dependent upon meltwater from mountain glaciers and these over the course of the last century, have almost completely disappeared as they migrated to safer areas or succumbed to hunger or disease. For much of the rest of the world, humidity has sky-rocketed, together with the heat, bringing vector-borne diseases to many regions that had never before felt the effects of dengue, malaria or typhoid fever. Rivers across Europe and parts of Asia have swelled from constant increased rainfall and a lot of once arable land has been overtaken by swamp. Global climate changes has not only affected the map of the earth and the way humans live, it has also affected its flaura and fauna. By twenty-fifty, over 15% of the worlds plants and animals existing in 2010 had gone extinct or were committed to doing so. As man turned increasingly in the twenty-fifties and sixties to wood-based charcoal for energy, the extinctions accelerated as many habitats were burned. By twenty-one hundred extinction rates neared 50%. The massive loss of biodiversity, especially in the world’s oceans has greatly affected the ecosystems with the loss of one animal species leading to the loss of several others dependent upon that first species. Fisheries in particular have been hit hard and coral reefs are all but extinct. Species thought to have gone extinct include all species of gorillas, all species of hippopotamus, all species of tiger, Javan, black, and northern white rhinos, several sea turtle species, Asian elephants, Bactrian camels, Ethiopian wolves, Iberian lynx, axolotls, Philippine eagle, California condor, Chinese alligators, the blue whale, narwhals, Asian elephants, giant pandas, snow leopards, Bornean orangutan, Tasmanian devils, and many, many more. Ultimately while the rate of acceleration of climate change has fallen dramatically in the last twenty years, presumably as a reflection of humanity’s greatly reduced fossil fuel usage, it does continue to rise and is expected to continue to do so, though at a reduced rate, for the foreseeable future. Population Crash and Food and Water Crisis Specialists in 2010 had already warned that the earth was unable to sustainably maintain its current population and that nearly one-third of the world’s current population would have to be removed for long-term stability. Of course the ‘green revolution’ and other technologies meant that human-kind had blown through that limit long ago. But that only meant that the increased population was not sustainable. Ultimately run-away population growth and the complications that it brought, especially upon the climate, effectively greatly reduced the carrying capacity of the earth in the long term. And so it came as no small surprise, despite the massive suffering, when the inevitable occurred. Amongst the factors that contributed to the population crash, one of the first was the availability of water. Many regions were over-pumping from their water-tables as early as the 1990s. Indeed by twenty-ten, there were 130 million people in China and 175 million in India that were being fed grain irrigated with water from aquifers pumped out faster than they were being replaced and while falling water levels could be compensated for by drilling deeper, this was a short-term solution at best. Indeed loss of aquifers due to overuse led to complete shutdown of wheat production in Saudri Arabia by 2012, though at least they had nice green golf courses, and parts of northern China and California come up dry by the twenty-teens. Depletion of the Ogallala aquifier in the early twenty-twenties quickly turned ‘America’s Breadbasket’ back into the dust-bowl of the 1930s with similar economic and humanitarian effects. Increasing, access to fresh water meant food security; and innumerable small border conflicts over access to fresh water occurred both between nations and within them as populations grew increasingly desperate. The food crisis was already beginning to be felt by twenty-ten. The food crisis of twenty-eleven and the rise in commodity prices brought an early view of what would soon grip the world but it was only the beginning. For too many decades monocultures of wheat, rice, and corn provided high yield and resistance to chemically-derived herbicides and pesticides weeds did not have. They also left them wide open to pathogens. The UG99 fungus that by twenty-ten had already struck at Africa and Asia, greatly reducing wheat production there and in some nations completely stopping it, by twenty-fifteen could be found throughout the world. Hundreds of millions starved and rising food prices drove over 100 million into extreme poverty every year. It was the beginning of the end for many of the agricultural megacorporations and ‘species diversity’ became the buzzword amongst farmers though this meant less overall productivity. As the effects on energy shortages and climate change were felt more and more upon agricultural production, the price of food, especially distant from its production, continued to soar. Government welfare systems failed, often catastrophically, and many districts, provinces, and states went bankrupt attempting to deal with the problem. Ultimately nothing could be done and when a second fungal pathogen swept through rice crops in twenty thirty eight over one third of the world’s population succumbed to hunger or disease. With energy shortage and severe economic contraction the average human felt a massive drop in their living standards. The lucky ones were able to retreat to some homestead and cultivate their own food but the majority could not and quickly succumbed. The years from 1940 to the present saw a reversion in the way people lived and many returned to some lifestyle half like those of medieval peasants and half like self-sufficient small-scale communists. By 2080 the worlds population had reached it new low point (somewhere around 750 million) and since that time has climbed, every so slowly, to the current approximated population of 780 million. World Economies “I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” Revelations 6: 2 The depression gripping the western world in 2011 never abated. The European states continued to fall one-by-one, Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain had all failed, to one degree or another by 2012. The housing market in the US, Britain and Canada never recovered and every year there were fewer and fewer good jobs for a growing number off out-of-work people. Much of the western world’s populations were increasingly spending their incomes on a disproportionately larger and larger food and fuel bill and had less and less for the consumption that had driven their economies for decades. The world never really recovered from the western world’s depression of the twenty-teens and by 2018, as the Chinese economic giant, often based on cheap exports, was faced with the two-pronged threat of greatly reduced foreign markets and rising energy and food costs, the depression spread to them and by the end of the year enveloped every nation on earth. Increasingly economies are diverging and the prices of commodities are diverging with them. The economic price convergence that had begun with Islamic trade between Europe and Asia millennia ago and which was greatly accelerated first by the European naval-military complex and later the rise of steam and fossil-fuel based shipping was finally starting to unwind. No longer was it affordable to grow a nation’s food in a far-away nation or continually import manufactured products from far away; shipping costs were just too great. Globalization was being replaced with localization. In twenty-twenty five some shipping companies had begun exploring the use of sail-based shipping and this was found to be, in the new economy, fairly cost-effective, truly illustrating how far we had fallen. Today’s oceanic shipping continues to be, for the most part, sail-powered. The fossil-fuel based manufacturing which dominated in the twenty-first century, by twenty-twenty was falling apart. Thorium atomic power and solar and wind-derived energy could provide some continuance of modern industry but their energy was so sought after that any product reliant upon energy for its production soon became much too expensive for anyone to afford. By twenty-thirty hand tools were replacing power tools, and what remained of heavy industry were moving as close as possible to where their raw materials and markets were located. Petroleum-based fibers were soon replaced by organically grown natural fibers, be they animal or plant and local labor-based manufacturing producing cloth, blankets, sails and ropes boomed. A general return to homesteading and self-sufficiency did create a market for wood lot, seed sales, draft animal breeding, bicycle manufacture and other businesses in that scale. Larger extra-territorial corporations or governments are all closely tied to some source of energy production, be it atomic, solar or more rarely wind. These sources of energy are closely guarded and certainly worth developing militaries to protect. It is not a long leap of imagination to think that these militaries, in turn, would offer protection and organization to the surrounding homesteads, as well as whatever manufactured products they may produce in exchange for their food and often, labor. Smaller scale warlords performing the same function are common. The division of populations according to these localized industries and the formation of military power around localized energy production has, of course, led to the splintering of many of the world’s larger nations (as well as the smaller) with economic prosperity highly variable geopolitically. Ultimately the world’s manufacturing and commerce, with a few notable exception upon which the few powerful elite build their influence, has returned to some semblance of what it was prior to the industrial revolution… or nearly so. Health, Disease, and Plague “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” Revelations 6: 8 As energy supplies dwindled and government welfare systems collapsed so too did public health systems. Much of what was considered modern medicine was highly dependent on energy and the products of petroleum. The price of drugs quickly skyrocketed in energy-deprived nations and as public welfare and insurance conglomerates failed in the accelerating depression. Only the most elite and powerful could afford medical treatment and the cost of the doctor or surgeon was the smallest portion of those treatments. Hospitals, throughout the thirties disappeared almost completely. For the average civilian suffering from the collapse of ‘modern’ industry, food insecurity and often war and violence, it was still possible to get medical treatment, but those treatments were more and more rudimentary. Rising pollution, both due to an increased number of pollutants reaching the ecosystem as nations scrambled for the last of the world’s coal and fossil fuels and industry more and more prioritized production over environment, as well as increased temperature and humidity, put increased pressure on the old, the sick, or the maladapted. Asthma and environmental allergy rates skyrocketed and many, unable to afford even simple treatments, succumbed. With the failure of monolithic monocropping farming techniques, the coming of the droughts and the depletion of word aquifiers world populations began massive migrations, many returning to rural living but just as many continually moving from place to place, just trying to survive and find a place to make a new home. As they migrated, they succumbed to malnutrition, starvation, dehydration and especially disease. And where they moved to, they spread their disease. Migrants from any nation, as they searched for food and water soon became associated with plague and death and many communities barricaded themselves, and their dwindling resources, against the mass of shifting humanity. When the Amazon river reversed its flow, human effluent flooded upriver villages, towns, cities and homesteads. The same thing happened in the Indus and Ganges river deltas as a combination of slowing meltwater and rising sea levels led to backflow. The flooding of the New Orleans, European lowloads, Carrribean and Pacific islands all had similar consequences; massive cholera spread and hundreds of millions of lives lost. With the failure of the majority of public health systems and governments, diseases once thought eradicated, including a wide variety of bacterial diseases often easily treated with common antibiotics only a few short decades ago returned with a vengeance. Tuberculosis in particular has re-emerged dramatically, especially in Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Diseases once nearly eradicated by vaccination, including diphtheria, pertussis and measles have, and continue to, lay waste to a large percentage of the population. In additional to naturally occurring diseases, a weaponized filovirus similar to Marburg was released upon the attacking army of a post-splintered Manchurian army in 2035 when the Manchurian army, in a last-ditch effort to secure energy independence marched into Siberia to claim oil extracted from oil-sand deposits. The virus, once released remained aerosolized throughout much of northern China, and even, unfortunately parts of neutral Korea, for months and led to over a hundred million deaths. It also stopped the Manchurian invasion and guaranteed Siberian control of its dwindling oil sand reserves for several more years. In 2038, while the USA was desperately preoccupied in the eastern Pacific with what remained of the People’s Liberation Army, the greatly expanded Los Zetas Cartel attempted an invasion so as to secure the Colorado river’s freshwater which had run dry in the border region as early as the 20-teens. While they were successful in destroying the Glen Canyon dam, and innumerable smaller irrigation projects, the American military, desperate, released weaponized anthrax spores upon the invaders and much of the north Mexican population… and ended the invasion. In 2052, an influenza pandemic spread throughout much of Europe, Asia and Africa (though less in the Americas) and claimed hundreds of millions of more lives as very few had the antivirals or even rudimentary treatments to assist in secondary complications arising from out-of-control immune responses to the disease. Indeed, like the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’, the pandemic was marked by incredibly severe symptoms including hemorrhage from the mouth, nose and anus. Nomadic, malnourished, dehydrated populations were wiped out, almost completely, in many cases. The most recent pandemic to strike humanity emerged in Latin America in 2078 and the infectious agent was never identified. By spring of 2079 it had spread across the world. Causing a slow wasting, fever, and joint ache, and characterized by severe neurological symptoms, the disease soon became known as the Amazonian Shakes and struck particularly hard at children and teenagers, as well as the elderly, and was often fatal within months. Fortunately, this was the last of the great pandemics to sweep the globe. War and Conflict “Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.” Revelations 6: 4 The wars and conflicts that have beset the globe are too numerous to enumerate. Biological and nuclear weapons have been unleashed. National and ideological conflicts have fallen to the wayside in the face of pressing food and energy shortfalls and both foreign and domestic conflicts have been fought over water, food, oil, and other energy supplies. Amongst some of the more notable conflicts are the invasion of Venezuela by the United States to secure the lake Maracaibo oil reserves, the simultaneous cyber and nuclear attacks by China upon the United States to protect oil reserves near the Philippines from development by American interests, the invasion of American southwest by the Los Zetas drug cartel so as to secure the Colorado river water supply, the invasion of de-industrialized Arab nations by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the conventional and nuclear wars fought by Pakistan, India, and China over the aquifer and oil reserves of Kashmir, the Uranium-motivated invasion of central Asia and Kazakhstan by the Islamic Repubic of Iran and the resultant war with Russia, the invasion of southern Iberia and it solar farms by the Maghreb Union, and many more. No doubt the future will bring even more turmoil and strife. This is the world we live in. Category:History